Pretty much everyone has an interest in talking up UKip. Farage for obvious reasons, Labour and Tories to scaremonger, and the media plays ball as usual.

Interesting to see the tabloids go on an all out attack as well - is there any paper that supports them?

Mail and Express both said vote Tory or Ukip.

I don't understand what you mean but Labour and Tories having an interest in talking up Ukip. The votes Ukip took off them pose a direct threat to their electoral chances (esp Tories) and have helped to underline the Ed's-a-loser narrative so beloved of the media.

edit: Oh hang on, you mean to motivate their supporters to the polls? They'd rather this were a problem that just went away.

Domestically, they don't control a single council and don't have a single MP in the Commons.

Sky News crunched the numbers of the local elections to see what it might mean for Westminster election. Even with this supposed "earthquake" and the Euro elections to draw their support to the polls, it still meant just one seat in 2015 – Castle Point in Essex.

The worrying part is that the notion of a 4-party system is now so well established they'll continue to get way more airtime than their likely Westminster vote share merits.

edit: Oh hang on, you mean to motivate their supporters to the polls? They'd rather this were a problem that just went away.

Of course they wish it would go away- but the hysterical tone and content of the media coverage and statements from all parties point to an attempt to demonise UKip - in fact this has been going on for ages, and, I think, it has backfired quite spectacularly.

Of course they wish it would go away- but the hysterical tone and content of the media coverage and statements from all parties point to an attempt to demonise UKip - in fact this has been going on for ages, and, I think, it has backfired quite spectacularly.

Agreed.

And RE papers - Ive seen the Sun and the Telegraph really stick the boot in. Could've sworn I saw something in the mail as well.

Just repeating what I read on Twitter, can't remember the source. But it was a rundown of the paper's leader recommendations on the day, not balance of coverage or individual columnists.

If right-wing papers are having a dig at UKIP, surely it's just because the party is going to be taking far more votes away from the Tories than from Labour? So they get to ostensibly distance themselves from a quite openly bigoted party while quietly welcoming its inevitable effect of pulling Tory policy (further) to the right to try and staunch the steady trickle of voters to UKIP.

"What of Farage's suggestion that Ukip will hold the balance of power after next year's general election? "He's a fantasist. They always do well in Euro elections because they're the obvious party of protest, but the idea that they're going to come from nothing to be holding the balance of power is ridiculous. I don't expect them to get any seats."

Any vote for Ukip in the European poll, says Sked, was wasted. "If you elect a Ukip MEP, you're just going to elect another incompetent charlatan that you're going to turn into another millionaire. They go native in Brussels, take the expenses and the perks and do fuck all."

"Behind that image is someone who isn't bright," says Sked, who recalls trying to give the public school-educated Farage remedial grammar lessons: "I spent two hours trying to explain to him the difference between 'it's' with an apostrophe and 'its' without and he just flounced out the office saying, 'I just don't understand words.'"

People on twitter who would never vote UKIP anyway may have got very excited about both of them, but they seem not to have made any impact at the polls. I suspect what will matter more will be their utter incompetence as local councillors. People really don't like that.

What an odd thing to do. Sunder Katwala's one of those "don't call UKIP racist" guys, isn't he?

Yup.

His think-tank British Futures is very consensualist, very feel-your-pain, whether it's people who don't like living next door to immigrants or those who think they should all be sent back... pardon, encouraged to leave.